Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China: Amazon.ca: Jung Chang: Books

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From Amazon

In Wild Swans Jung Chang recounts the evocative, unsettling, and insistently gripping story of how three generations of women in her family fared in the political maelstrom of China during the 20th century. Chang's grandmother was a warlord's concubine. Her gently raised mother struggled with hardships in the early days of Mao's revolution and rose, like her husband, to a prominent position in the Communist Party before being denounced during the Cultural Revolution. Chang herself marched, worked, and breathed for Mao until doubt crept in over the excesses of his policies and purges. Born just a few decades apart, their lives overlap with the end of the warlords' regime and overthrow of the Japanese occupation, violent struggles between the Kuomintang and the Communists to carve up China, and, most poignant for the author, the vicious cycle of purges orchestrated by Chairman Mao that discredited and crushed millions of people, including her parents. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Bursting with drama, heartbreak and horror, this extraordinary family portrait mirrors China's century of turbulence. Chang's grandmother, Yu-fang, had her feet bound at age two and in 1924 was sold as a concubine to Beijing's police chief. Yu-fang escaped slavery in a brothel by fleeing her "husband" with her infant daughter, Bao Qin, Chang's mother-to-be. Growing up during Japan's brutal occupation, free-spirited Bao Qin chose the man she would marry, a Communist Party official slavishly devoted to the revolution. In 1949, while he drove 1000 miles in a jeep to the southwestern province where they would do Mao's spadework, Bao Qin walked alongside the vehicle, sick and pregnant (she lost the child). Chang, born in 1952, saw her mother put into a detention camp in the Cultural Revolution and later "rehabilitated." Her father was denounced and publicly humiliated; his mind snapped, and he died a broken man in 1975. Working as a "barefoot doctor" with no training, Chang saw the oppressive, inhuman side of communism. She left China in 1978 and is now director of Chinese studies at London University. Her meticulous, transparent prose radiates an inner strength. Photos. BOMC alternate.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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At the age of fifteen my grandmother became the concubine of a warlord general, the police chief of a tenuous national government of China. Read the first page

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229 Reviews

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4.6 out of 5 stars (229 customer reviews)

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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent historical account, May 28 2004

By

Lemas Mitchell "Libertarian/ Empiricist" (Hunan Changsha) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (Paperback)

This book does something that most people don't get around to doing when they say this or that about China: Provide historical detail. Specifically of interest:

1. The reason that the Kuomintang was not successful in China was constant corruption. Some people have suggested that Chinese people love tyrants (Jasper Becker, "The Chinese") and this is the explanation of why they rejected what would have been a democratic government for an authoritarian government. This is partially true, but the Kuomintang blew any chance that it had at legitimacy with its rampant corruption.

2. That the Communist Party became popular because they promised to not be like the corrupt and crooked Kuomintang. Her father is an example of one of the wide-eyed idealists that really believed in his cause at the beginning and was left a broken man when he saw what actually became of this grand vision. People at Western universities are always attacking the West and praising the Communist ideology/ governent allocation of resources, and they haven't a faintest idea of the actual RESULTS of the intended programs. Nor do they understand the incentive structures that led to those results.

3. Historical accounts of the great famine. I can't believe that this very afternoon, there are still people trying to talk away this historical event in China and say that it was just a statistical illusion. This is the second author that I've read that gives historical accounts of people eating their children.

4. Demonstrating how the cult of Mao was created and maintained, as well as what were his motives in the various campaigns (Cultural Revolution/ The Great Leap Forward) that swept the country during his reign. Another author (Anhua Gao) has also noted that Mao generated a lot of morass in the country because the weaker the country, the easier it was to control. But her detail is not comparable to the author of this book. She showed the self-denunciation meetings and the stages of his campaigns to keep the country divided and fighting against itself. It may be another 200 years before China shakes off the residual results of his rule (such as overpopulation and then the resulting sex imbalance that has come about because of population control), but here in this is an example of WHAT happened, and HOW it happened.

5. Showing the highly ritualized behavior of Chinese people in things such as foot binding, etc. A lot of people may come to China and wonder where people here get their ideas from and why they are prisoner of them. This author demonstrates that it's been that way for a *long* time. And it may never change.

It's hard to recommend this book enough times for someone who wants *actual results* of what happens in the context of a Communist Revolution, as opposed to the vague ramblings of something like the Communist Manifesto or state-sheltered academics in Western universities.

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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing Memoir, Aug 16 2006

By

Katrina (Edmonton, Alberta) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (Paperback)

I read this book while living/working in China, in 2001. The headmaster of the school where I was teaching, actually lent me the book. It's banned in China, of course, so I was shocked when I saw it on his shelf. He too was scorned by the Cultural Revolution, and I've often wondered how his story would have read. I found that the Chinese are very tight-lipped about what they truly think on political matters, and the history of China... communism, moreso! This being said, reading a memoir such as this, was very informative. I can't even imagine going through such hardships. It's no wonder the Chinese are very resilient people! To be honest, I can't blame them for keeping their thoughts to themselves, knowing how the history of that country. Powers were constantly shifting, and a few words which were the right thing to say at one time, would have to incriminated then next (after powers shifted once again). The book certainly helped me to understand why China is the way it is today! I had a lot more empathy for the Chinese people as a whole.

I still find myself looking at an elderly Chinese person, and wondering what their life was like when they were younger. Every one of them could write a memoir which would be equally as gripping as this one.

This book is excellent. I loved it, and couldn't put it down. I've lent it out many times, and plan to read it again!

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5.0 out of 5 stars Wild Swans, Mar 14 2012

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pointone - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (Audio Cassette)

The tapes showed up before I was looking for them and I can't wait to listen to them. Thanks for meeting this need.

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